Two top universities last week approved big real-estate deals that have or will have a major impact on the neighborhoods in which they are located.

On Thursday the University of Pennsylvania’s trustees endorsed a plan that would spend $1.94-billion, most of it Penn money, to revitalize a 40-acre tract on the edge of the campus, according to today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. The epic project along the Schuylkill River is expected to take 20 years and replace “an eyesore of a site” with office buildings, condominiums, research centers, sports fields, shops, and restaurants.

Meanwhile, in Cambridge, Mass., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology signed off on a deal to sell the huge Technology Square complex to a real-estate company based in California for $600-million, more than twice what MIT paid for it in 2001, according to Saturday’s Boston Globe. Under the agreement, the university will continue to own the complex’s land.